


Keep In Mind I’ll Be There For You

by luninosity



Series: ...and this compromise [4]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bottom!Charles, Consensual Kink, Dom/sub, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Porn with Feelings, Sex Toys, Telepathy, Top!Erik, What Happens When Charles Needs An Outlet, metal, random cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:43:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tony sighs. “This is some kinky mutant sex thing, isn’t it? Come on, I thought we were friends, don’t I get to know about your kinky mutant sex thing?” Charles finds himself startled into a laugh.</i>
</p>
<p>Or, Erik and Charles end up separated for a while on their recruitment trip. Charles misses Erik like the oceans miss the moon. </p>
<p>Series being written for a prompt of <i>Erik and Charles are starting to negotiate a budding relationship - as dominant (Erik) and submissive (Charles). Whilst Charles is all for this, as someone who's been bred and raised to be in charge of any given situation, he can't help find the whole thing very awkward. Erik's happy to be patient with him - he just loves him and wants to look after him, even if Charles still isn't comfortable with being looked after.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [garrideb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/garrideb/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [[授权翻译]Keep In Mind I’ll Be There For You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3831211) by [Shame_i_translate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shame_i_translate/pseuds/Shame_i_translate)



> For garrideb, who wanted to know what would happen in this ’verse if Erik and Charles ended up accidentally separated for long enough that Charles starts needing that outlet for release and doesn’t have his Dominant around. I wanted to know, too. Title and opening lines from Green Day’s “Poprocks and Coke”, this time.

 

_wherever you go, you know I’ll be there_   
_if you go far, you know I’ll be there_   
_I’ll go anywhere_   
_so I’ll see you there_   
_you place the name, you know I’ll be there_   
_you name the time, you know I’ll be there_   
_I’ll go anywhere…_

  
  
  
A week. It’s been a week, or it will have been, by this time tomorrow, since he’s seen Erik in person.  
  
Charles studies himself in the mirror, hair that refuses to lie flat and pensive eyes, and touches his left wrist, lightly, a memory.  
  
It’s neither of their faults, of course. The CIA, growing impatient, has sent them off to opposite ends of the country, Erik to New Orleans and Charles out to California, the teeming sprawl of Los Angeles and the scent of smog and sea and saltwater in the air. They’d promised to track down their respective targets and meet up again, a week later, the earliest they could get flights and schedules to align.  
  
His own had been quick and disappointing, utterly uninterested in anything beyond tending bar and sneakily subtly enhancing the effects of the alcohol, so that loyal customers returned in droves. Charles, head whirling from his own single drink and the crush of uninhibited minds, had left his card, and retreated.  
  
Erik hadn’t finished with his own elusive target at that point, a man proving unexpectedly difficult to locate; Charles had asked whether he ought to come and assist, and had been treated to a lengthy Erik-grumble about not needing amateurs on a mission and specialized skills and being able to take care of this one himself, thank you, and so Charles hadn’t asked again.  
  
He’d called up Tony Stark, instead.  
  
Tony’d been more than delighted—“You’re out here finally, it’s been too long, we should have a party! With girls! And cheeseburgers! There’s this place in Malibu that does the best cheeseburgers, we can get them to cater—” and Charles, grinning at all the enthusiasm, had agreed.  
  
It’s been a good two days. Complete with cheeseburgers and views of the Pacific Ocean in the sun. But he’s supposed to be leaving in the morning. Or _was_ supposed to be.  
  
He looks at his wrist again, in the blue-hued depths of the mirror.  
  
He’s not wearing the cuffs, that slim sinuous streak of metal Erik’d woven out of the surrendered line of Charles’s watch, but only because they’d accidentally left said cuffs joined together, a looping graceful figure eight that would fit neatly around his arms but would be fairly conspicuous, not to mention inconvenient, while he was walking around or eating breakfast. They’re at the bottom of his bag, currently. Waiting.  
  
Waiting, he thinks. Perhaps he can get Erik to make him something else. Something less obvious, that he can wear, when they’re apart, when they’re out together.  
  
He’d’ve never imagined, a few short months ago, that he’d be wanting a tangible symbol of his own submission. He’d spent too many years trying not to want anything of the sort. Trying to run as far, and as fast, as he could from the fists of home.  
  
Oxford had meant freedom, the bright wintry joy of a clear grey sky, medieval spires stretching upward to dance with the clouds. Had meant the glittering lure of intellectual discovery, the challenges of academic puzzles and the delight of an at-last solution, the intricate beauty of a DNA helix, spiraling with all the secrets of life. He could be strong there, on his own.  
  
And if he had to seek out a hiatus, a reprieve, from all that life from time to time, he could make it quick and dirty, what he needed when he needed it, no emotions beyond the momentary eclipse of hands and bodies and pain and roughness. No attachments. No commitments beyond the point of getting off, mutual use and satisfaction.  
  
With Erik everything feels different. With Erik, he wants to kneel and be used and fall into weightlessness because he trusts that he’ll be caught.  
  
Because he wants to give Erik everything. All the pieces of himself to hold in safekeeping.  
  
This feels a lot like acceptance, he decides. And he can be strong on his own without having to be alone.  
  
On the wings of that thought, he reaches out, a wordless questioning tendril of thought. Erik’s awfully far away, of course, and busy—in a bar, Charles thinks, picking up the jostling, the smoke, the sweet tang of rum; Erik’s meeting an old acquaintance, not a friend because men in those professions tend not to have friends, but someone who can help him find the mutant they’re seeking. Erik’s very good at finding people, by now.  
  
Despite being busy, Erik senses the long-distance wistfulness, and that iron-clad presence is startled at first, then relaxes, shyly, into pleasure. Erik would deny the shyness, with a derisive snort, but it’s true: he’s not at all shy in most ways, Charles thinks privately, but in some, yes. When it comes to being touched, being loved, accepting his own happiness.  
  
It is a long distance, though, and they’re both preoccupied and tired, so he withdraws, reluctantly. Erik’s mind clings to his, briefly and probably unconsciously, for an extra second, but they both understand.  
  
It’ll be more than a week, now. Erik’s determined to finish his own mission tonight, that’s going to happen one way or another, but it won’t matter. Weather on the East Coast is such that all flights’ve been grounded, and even more delayed as a result, from everywhere else. There’s no telling when Erik’s actually going to get out, or when they’ll both make it home.  
  
“You’re staying with me,” Tony’d said, promptly, when he’d noticed Charles’s listlessness at breakfast. “You’re staying with me, and you’re helping me with the bio aspects of this bioengineering problem, I’m working on implants that bond directly with the human nervous system, and you know all that living-breathing-people stuff is more your thing than mine, and also there should be more parties. You haven’t even tried the imported tequila yet. I’d tell you how good it is, but I honestly don’t remember.”  
  
Charles had sighed, and thought, _Erik_ …and gotten a flash of response, Erik talking his way into a card game with sheer confidence and unyielding eyes, determination paramount. He’d sighed again—Tony’s project really was tempting—and said yes.  
  
And it’s been fun. Of course it has, everything Tony Stark does is fun, that’s a requirement of Tony’s life; but Charles nevertheless misses Erik with irrational indescribable longing, unanchored without Erik’s hand around his wrist as they fall asleep or Erik’s foot resting casually atop his when they sit down or Erik’s smile, possessive and hot and just a bit amazed, even now, when Charles kneels at his command.  
  
Like the tide without a moon. The earth in the aftermath of a quake, shaky and askew.  
  
Erik’s his balance. He might’ve been scared, thinking that, before. Today the idea makes him smile, though the smile’s a little painful, just now.  
  
They’d known in advance that they’d be sent in opposite directions, but they’d had a day in between, in a dusty Spanish-themed San Antonio hotel, sunlight falling like antique gold over pale carpet and carved-wood bedposts. Erik had looked at him, and displayed all those teeth in exuberant invitation, and they’d both heard the words as loudly as if they’d been spoken _: you’ll remember this, later, after, I want you to spend the next week thinking of today and thinking of me…_  
  
Either of them could’ve said it. Both. True either way.  
  
He glances at himself in the mirror again. The marks’ve all faded, by now. No visible signs of Erik’s mouth or hands to show what’s transpired between them. His eyes look a little different, maybe, though. Not something he can put a finger on, but real nonetheless: he’s Erik’s, and he knows it, and that knowledge is a wellspring of quiet joy.  
  
Erik’d put him on his knees and kept him there, with only a simple request and the weight of that long-fingered hand on his head; Charles, shivering—not from fear—had glanced up and back down and waited, letting the calm seep into his bones. He’d known Erik must have something in mind.  
  
Erik definitely had.  
  
Wrist cuffs, again; not a surprise, that one, not since the last time and the time before, but welcome in any case.  
  
Sleek metal, smoothed and shaped and slick, inside him; deep inside him, where it pressed against that searingly electric spot every time he moved or shifted position or sat back on his heels. He suspected that Erik was subtly lengthening the plug, making it swell, increasing the pressure, from time to time.  
  
More metal—and if he’d been able to think more clearly he’d’ve wondered about the source, but then again Erik would likely only have grinned with all those teeth—sliding up, coyly, to seal itself around his eager cock, a sheath, warm or cool as Erik wanted it to be. The sensation of fingers slipping up and down and rippling over his skin, but ceasing abruptly each time he tried to give in to it and let go.  
  
The pauses were Erik’s way of warning him, teasing him, making him behave. He’d breathed in, and remained on his knees, and let the world dissolve into the serene golden space of acceptance.  
  
After some indeterminate while, Erik’d said, thoughtfully, _I believe I’d like to review your itinerary again, Charles, bring me your flight and hotel information, please_ , and Charles had stared up at him, wide-eyed, shocked.  
  
He almost hadn’t done it. Not that kind of obedience, compliance with orders given so coolly while Charles himself was quivering with need, with the presence of Erik’s metal inside him, around him; and he’d stayed frozen in place for a split second, impulses at war.  
  
Erik hadn’t asked again, but hadn’t rescinded the order, either. Had lifted his hand away from Charles’s head.  
  
Charles had closed his eyes—he closes them now, in the present, remembering—and taken a deep breath and gotten up, over to the case with all their paperwork and official documentation; and back, carefully settling himself down again on the floor with papers held out awkwardly in cuffed hands.  
  
He’d not done it because Erik’d asked. He’d done it because he’d wanted to. He’d only hesitated because he’d never expected to want to.  
  
Erik had looked at his face, and then kissed him, gently, soundlessly checking in: _still all right?_  
  
 _Yes,_ he’d whispered back, _I am_ , and Erik’d smiled, that rare true smile like rainfall over thirsty ground, and taken the papers out of his hands and sat down in the room’s only chair with Charles kneeling at his feet. Had proceeded to calmly read through it all, memorizing timetables and locations, blade-sharp mind flickering through possibilities, probabilities, conceivable dangers or threats or minor annoyances, calculating the odds of Charles’s safety at any given moment…  
  
Charles, there on the worn soft carpet with that thick metallic weight stirring inside him at Erik’s pleasure, hands tugged almost as an afterthought behind his back, had known exactly why Erik needed to know those things, and had felt warm, and cherished, and loved.  
  
Erik, idly, had lowered a hand and skimmed fingers along the arch of his cheekbone, his chin, his lips; at that last one, Charles opened his mouth and let the fingers enter, and sucked at them, licking from base to tip, caressing them with his tongue, enjoying the sensation.  
  
Erik’d finished reading and memorizing and set the papers aside and looked at him assessingly: _Do you want me to fuck you, Charles?_  
  
 _Yes, Erik._  
  
And they had, Charles facedown over the mattress, hands still bound, cock still bound in metal that tightened hard, so that he couldn’t touch himself, couldn’t find release, couldn’t come, even while Erik’s hard length plunged into him again and again, even when Erik groaned his name and that orgasm shattered through both their thoughts like a falling star. Not even when Erik slid out of him, and used those fingers to push his legs further apart, himself on display, slick messiness of lube and Erik’s climax dripping out of that most intimate of spaces, opened up and used the way that Erik wanted him to be.  
  
He’d been sobbing, softly, mind utterly empty of everything except all the colliding needs, the need to reach his own orgasm and the need to be good and the need for _more_ , everything that would keep the noise of the world at bay for a while longer, his cock a heavy delicious ache between his legs and his thoughts full, simply, of Erik. He’d squirmed against the bed, pushed up against those curious fingers, because he’d had to, desperate to feel it all.  
  
 _Not very obedient,_ Erik said, calmly, in his memory. _Hands and knees, Charles. Here on the bed_.  
  
The first crack of Erik’s hand across his bottom had stung—Erik wasn’t holding back—but it’d been beautiful, as well: that clear sharp moment of white heat, the brilliance of pain brightening all the ecstasy to impossible heights. Again, and again.  
  
Erik’d paused, once, and bent over him, after his arms’d given out and he’d collapsed into the pillows, hips remaining up like a last offering of surrender. He’d been crying, face wet with emotion, not as much from the pain or the punishment as from the liberation, the acceptance, the sheer sense of rightness in the comprehension of it, that Erik could take him to the edge like this and hold him there and keep him protected while he fell apart.  
  
Erik had kissed him, lightly, lips brushing the lonely little spot behind his right shoulderblade, the spot where no one else’d ever thought to kiss him before, the spot he’d only realized then had always been wanting someone to kiss it. He’d cried a little harder, at that.  
  
Erik, who’d understood, had stopped the spanking and pulled Charles into his lap and petted his back in long slow rhythms and set one large hand right over the curve of his bottom, right where all that skin was still burning and hot and tender. Had slowly, at last, dissolved the metal imprisoning Charles’s swollen cock, and taken him in hand there as well. Stroked in tandem, one hand working his erection and the other rubbing across the reddened handprints, unhurried and intent.  
  
The arousal had been omnipresent, by then. Not centered in his cock or in that opened and sticky space between his spread legs, but everywhere, swirling headily through skin and bones and heart, along his spine and down to his toes, vertiginous and euphoric.  
  
 _Come for me_ , Erik’d commanded, implacably, and Charles hadn’t even been able to cry out, only shuddering helplessly with the flood, pent-up climax pouring out over Erik’s hand, his own stomach, the bed.  
  
He might’ve passed out, briefly; he recalls waking up, after, to Erik holding him, that worried voice whispering soft words in English and German and other, more private, languages; murmurs of _Charles_ and _please_ and _I love you, I love you, come back, wake up for me_. He remembers the expression in pale eyes when he’d opened his own, blinking, and smiled.  
  
He catches himself smiling now, softly, at the mirror. And his eyes look dark, and wide, and flushed; signs of desire, his brain points out scientifically. Dilated pupils. Rapid breathing. He should probably stop thinking about Erik and sex and those warm hands on his skin, at least for the time being. Tony likely won’t appreciate all his guests suddenly being overcome by lust for their nearest acquaintances, at least not this early in the evening.  
  
Right. Out to the party, then. Just for tonight. And he’ll figure out a way to go and be with Erik in the morning.  
  
In the morning, he’s hideously hungover, a fact which he blames on Tony and the tequila. Tony only laughs and brings him a Bloody Mary and Charles says “I hate you” and falls back into bed with the pillow over his face.  
  
That’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is flipping on the television set to hear the weather reports. More closures. More storms. Erik won’t be getting out of, nor will Charles be getting into, New Orleans any time soon.  
  
More days. More time.  
  
Too much time. And Charles feels himself, bit by bit, wearing down. Wearing out, like tired clockwork. He can sense the springs coiling under all the tension, ready to snap. His shields’re good, but the constant maintenance is an effort, one that most people don’t understand; one unconsidered slip could send his mind falling into some unguarded one, his desires replacing their own, or the other way around, himself overwhelmed by everyone else’s needs and personalities, lost in the explosion…  
  
He wakes up from dreams that aren’t his, with names of lovers or enemies or long-lost siblings on his lips.  
  
He starts avoiding Tony’s guests, the focused engineers and interchangeable blonde reporters and even Pepper Potts, when she stops by to demand Tony’s signatures on some paperwork. He’s sorry, but they’re all just added pressure, over the thinning layers of his defenses.  
  
He knows what would help. What’s always helped before. That blessed hush of given-over control, the hot-cold welcome of pain and obedience and hands that aren’t his and all the pure sensations taking over, replacing his fraying command of himself with someone else’s, for a brief span of moments. A stay of execution, just in time.  
  
He can’t. He’s promised Erik—no one else, not ever again—and he means that promise. No one else. Not ever.  
  
He can’t even bring himself to orgasm. He tries, freshly showered and water-warmed and naked, alone in the luxurious expanse of bed, but he’s too aware that it’s himself directing it all, and though the physical caress feels good, he also remembers Erik saying, firm and inarguable as the pull of gravity, _if you need this, you ask me_ … He can’t.  
  
The denial helps. He holds onto that for a while. Something Erik’s asked of him, that he can do.  
  
He might be able to ask Erik for permission, of course—he can hear anyone in the world, after all, if he wants to. But that’s precisely the problem. Erik’s far away, and to hear him Charles has to open up and listen. And he _can_ hear anyone in the world. Right now, that’s a terrifying concept.  
  
Tony’s house parties—or, perhaps more accurately, ongoing party, singular—don’t offer any assistance. Too loud. Too many people. Too many minds, often brilliant, yes, but also lurching and unfettered and loosened by alcohol, all inhibitions gone and desires right out there on display.  
  
Charles, shivering, all of those aforementioned desires battering at his walls, goes out onto the balcony, more and more often, and sits alone beneath the silver-dusted blue expanse of the sky.  
  
At first he hides in the depths of the chairs, shifting positions, tucking feet up under pillowy cushions, wrapping arms around knees. After a while he starts sitting on the ground, because the chairs are too soft, not _enough_ somehow, too easy. At one point he finds himself perched on the cool thin line of the balcony railing, pointed rocks and the crash of waves calling from below, and he doesn’t remember how he got there.  
  
Eventually he makes himself move, gets his legs to work, and slips off the railing and collapses onto the balcony floor because he can’t quite find equilibrium. The impact makes him gasp.  
  
 _Erik_ , he tries, desperately, but it’s the middle of the night out there and while Erik is there, yes, Erik is also asleep, huge-pawed panther curled up for the night, one eye half-open as always but mostly drowsing and disinclined to be coherent. Charles can’t wake him, can’t ask, not when Erik’s dreaming of candlelight and freckled skin and snatches of music for once in place of steel and coins and laboratory instruments.  
  
He withdraws, gingerly, leaving behind a thought like a kiss that Erik’ll feel when he wakes, and then he sits down at the foot of his bed, on the floor, and wraps his other hand around his naked wrist, and hears the shrill crescendo of someone’s orgasm in the next room and the dull bass thumps of someone else’s bitter argument and another person’s intoxicated hazy fascination with the glow of the _lamps_ , man, the _light_ on the _glass_ , never _seen_ anything so beautiful, and he flings up wall after wall, as fast as the falling ones get assailed and overrun.  
  
It’s never fast enough.  
  
The next night, desperate, he tries getting drunk, himself. This does not go well.  
  
Sometimes alcohol helps; sometimes it can numb the sensations, drown out the persistent babbling of those other voices. That works better, unfortunately, when he’s alone, when the slippage between _pleasantly relaxed, walls coming down_ and _feeling nothing at all_ can be got past on his own. Of course, drinking on his own is a sign of something else, and he’s seen where that road goes and it’s no place he wishes to be, so he tries to avoid that one, generally speaking.  
  
In any case, the question of aloneness is irrelevant when one is staying with Tony Stark. No drinking _ever_ happens alone.  
  
Tony’s perfectly happy to keep pouring out the expensive scotch, being of the loudly professed opinion that the whole world’d be better off if it could just learn to loosen up. But Charles feels his control loosening as well, slackening, stray murmurs and whispers wandering over his brain like feral cats, even while he gets drawn into the bioengineering versus mechanical engineering debate regarding the next wave of the future, and Tony’s alcohol-fueled passion crackles and flares wildly across the waves of liquor.  
  
He begs off early, and goes back to his guest room, and curls up under the covers, stomach twisting with too much alcohol and not enough sanity. Eventually, he sleeps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Victor Creed is unpleasant, Tony Stark is a good friend, and Erik arrives at last.

“You need a distraction,” Tony says. “You’re pining.”  
  
“I am not.”  
  
“You are. This guy must be something special, Charles, honestly. You can’t even pay attention to _me_.”  
  
“Sorry. Have you got any tea?”  
  
“If by that you mean Long Island Iced Tea, then yes. There’s a television special on Charles Darwin. You could watch that and I could be incredibly bored next to you.” Tony, trying to help, Charles thinks, and smiles.  
  
“I’d likely just be enraged by the historical inaccuracies. I meant nonalcoholic tea. Earl Grey, English Breakfast, even chamomile…”  
  
“That last one isn’t even a word. And the first two aren’t drinks. Listen, I already invited a few people over for tonight, but if you want I can tell them to go away. You kind of look like you’re going to be sick, and I don’t want you to be sick. Spoils my fun.”  
  
“Thank you for the lack of any real concern,” Charles says. “Don’t send your guests away because of me. I’ll manage. Despite your egregious failure in the area of tea.”  
  
“I’ll show you a failure,” Tony says nonsensically, and three hours later presents him with an instant in-room teakettle that requires no external heating element to work. Plus a box of Earl Grey that Tony claims not to’ve known he had, though the packaging appears brand-new. Tony. Trying to help.  
  
Tony’s idea of “a few people” seems to mean something like “anyone who is or might conceivably be a friend, appears potentially good in bed, is useful on the engineering or government-contract front, or possesses a lot of money and charm.” Charles, who’s only ventured out of his room in search of another diversionary book, quickly finds himself cornered and propositioned by at least three young women and one young man, and then in theory rescued by an older man in a black suit, who turns out not to be a rescuer at all but interested in recruiting his services for the FBI’s internal investigations unit.  
  
At least that seems to be the interest. There’s another layer of intrigue there having to do with pretty eyes and soft skin, and Charles swallows hard and politely declines and backs toward the hallway.  
  
He’s good at being polite. He is. He’s got years of society training practically hardwired in. But now, right now, he’s got a crushing headache and all he wants is to be left alone.  
  
Most people get the message, whether from body language or because he’s inadvertently projecting. One person doesn’t.  
  
One person’s name is Victor Creed, and Charles already knows who he is, has sensed that mind through Cerebro and had shied away from approaching him then. He’s a mutant, yes. One of them. But not one of them at all. Not with that mind, that utter amorality.  
  
Charles knows about cruelty. And the briefest touch of Creed’s thuggish mind had made his skin crawl.  
  
Creed’s here tonight as security for one of Tony’s guests, some wealthy young woman’s bodyguard. He’s enjoying employment with the rich and famous. He enjoys the occasions upon which he’s allowed to hurt people even more.  
  
Creed looks right at him, across the room, and smiles. Not pleasantly.  
  
“Excuse me,” Charles says to the pretty redhead on his left who’s deep in discussion with a Colonel Rhodes, and ducks around her and heads for the hallway, and his room, and safety. He could attempt to move unnoticed, but he’s unsure about his fine control at the moment, and Tony might start noticing, despite all the tequila, if large clusters of his guests become invisible.  
  
He’s not trying to inconvenience Tony. He only wants to be alone.  
  
Of course it doesn’t work. Of course Creed’s an excellent hunter.  
  
He catches Charles just around the corner. Plants an arm against the wall in front of him, stopping his progress. Charles flinches, and wishes he hadn’t.  
  
Reflex. Reaction. Too many other arms barring his way, that same casual cruelty, in years past.  
  
“Where are you going, in such a hurry?” Creed sets the other arm on the wall behind him, and steps in, effectively trapping Charles with his bulk. “It is a party. We’re here for…fun.”  
  
“I suspect that you and I have very different definitions of fun.”  
  
“Wouldn’t be too sure about that.” One more shift of position, crowding him in. Charles can taste him, animalistic and inebriated, with the next breath.  
  
“I’m extremely sure. Excuse me.”  
  
Creed leers down at him. And Charles feels smaller than usual, pinned beneath that lascivious gaze, those meaty arms. Vulnerable. Easy to break.  
  
“No need to look scared. I can be all kinds of nice. If you say yes to me.”  
  
“No thank you,” Charles says, desperate, even more off-balance, raw and exposed and knowing that a few short months ago, in another life, he’d’ve given the yes, would have let Victor Creed take him home and bruise him and mark him and hurt him, just to make the world go quiet for a while, blank and still with the keen clarity of pain. He hates himself, then and now, for even the thought of it.  
  
“You’re here alone,” Creed rumbles. Leaves the arms in place on either side of his head. Those biceps’re just about the same size as said head. “You came to one of Tony Stark’s parties alone. Not a good decision, Charles.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Charles gets out, standing upright with the support of the fretful wall at his back, “I don’t think we’ve actually met.”  
  
“No. But I know who you are. That reputation precedes you.” Creed lifts one hand. Holds it up, in front of Charles’s eyes. Extends, very deliberately, bone-point claws. One, two, three, four, five. Charles can’t look away.  
  
“Not your scientific reputation, either. You once let a friend of mine fuck you, did you know that? Back room, at a club, you let him tie you up and fuck you on the floor, your own underwear shoved in your mouth so you wouldn’t scream, and you got off on that, didn’t you, Charles? He said you would do anything when you needed to be fucked. Pushing all the limits.” Creed licks his lips. “Could like the idea of pushing your limits, tonight.”  
  
“Please leave,” Charles says, voice wobbling slightly despite his best endeavors, “before I have to hurt you.”  
  
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you’re shy. Not you. You open your mouth for strangers in back alleys, Charles, you want to be used.” That expression turns darker, all at once. Even more dangerous. “Or is it a game? Is that it? You’re playing hard to get, with me?”  
  
“I’m not playing _anything_ —” One of Creed’s hands fastens around his upper arm. The one with the claws out. They puncture his shirt. His skin. He can feel the blood welling up in the holes.  
  
Sickeningly, very deep down, he comprehends the siren lure of that pain. With enough of it, the world will fade away, inside his head. He could give in. He could give in to it all and let Victor Creed hurt him until he can’t feel anything else.  
  
He won’t. He doesn’t need that. He’s Erik’s. Submissive, yes. He can admit that, these days. But he’s only submissive for one person, now. Because he _wants_ to be Erik’s.  
  
And he doesn’t want this, doesn’t want Creed, here or now or ever.  
  
Creed smiles at him. Unpleasantly.  
  
“I warned you,” Charles tells him. “I did warn you. Walk away.”  
  
This time those brutish eyes look happily surprised. “You’re going to make this interesting for me, aren’t you—”  
  
“Never.” Charles looks him directly in the eyes. “Walk away.” _Walk. Away_.  
  
The command’s loud enough, ringing through thoughts like a tocsin in the night, that several other people inadvertently inch to one side or another, too.  
  
Charles isn’t concerned with them. He’s concerned with Victor Creed. Whose eyes go wide with fury, even as his feet take rapid steps toward the door and carry him out into the dark. For good measure, and because he’s still shaking everywhere inside, Charles adds one more small detail. Creed won’t be having sex with anyone—won’t be physically able to have sex with anyone—for quite a long time to come.  
  
Across the room, Tony’s head’s snapped up, and he’s looking at Charles with shock that swiftly transmutes to concern. Charles, who cannot handle concern here and now in public, gets his legs to work and stumbles around a corner and slides to the floor in a heap on Tony’s ludicrously expensive polished-wood floor and pulls his knees up to his chest and sits there trembling.  
  
A few quick minutes later, there’s the sound of running footsteps, and the unmistakable flash of that Stark genius beside him. “Charles? What happened? Are you—hey, come on, look at me. Eyes open. Jesus, what the _hell_ , Charles, you look—you’re bleeding, that’s _blood_ , I’m going to _murder_ him—”  
  
 _Don’t_. Charles puts out a hand to stop him, before realizing that Tony’s approximately half-joking. _I’m all right_.  
  
“Like hell. What did he do to you? Or—what did you do to him? I’m assuming that was you taking care of yourself, there.”  
  
 _I only made him go away. He didn’t—it was mostly threatening, I think…_  
  
“You’re still whiter than a lot of very white things. Snow. Ghosts. Milk. I’m going to help, okay? Whatever you need.”  
  
Those words sound so much like what Erik’d once said to him: _anything you want, anything you need from me, you can have, I love you…_ They throb, bouncing off his bones. He’s so tired. Tired of feeling hollow, tired of feeling tense and drawn, a harpstring arrested mid-pluck. The note’s not completed, and it hurts.  
  
“Charles?” Tony looks at him with real alarm, now. “Hey, if you’re not—if he did something to—to hurt you, I mean more than—you know what I mean, just tell me, all right? I know you already threw him out, but I could ruin him financially if you want, I have a lot of money, I can do that sort of thing. _Are_ you all right?”  
  
He shivers. Too many words. Too much emotion behind them. Directed at him.  
  
“Hey.” Tony shakes him, not hard. “Look at me. Focus. I’m very attractive, okay, I’m a good thing to look at, you know you want to. You know who I am, right? Charles?”  
  
“No, I’m Charles,” Charles says, weakly, “you’re Tony, I thought I was the one we should be worried about,” and it’s not that good a joke but it earns a laugh regardless, one tinged with relief.  
  
“Okay, good. Listen…” Tony puts out a hand. Tips his chin up. Charles kind of wants to cry, at the gesture. “Can you tell me what’s going on? It’s not just Creed, is it?”  
  
“I’m…” He waves a hand. _Can I show you?_  
  
 _Of course._ Tony’s never been scared of him, or of the telepathy; probably having once seen a person intoxicated enough to start drawing DNA helixes in a puddle of spilled tequila on your kitchen floor means that you’re unlikely to ever be scared of said person, Charles reflects philosophically, and carefully opens up and narrows down the projection, letting Tony feel everything, for a single split second.  
  
 _Ow_ , Tony says, promptly, and clutches at his head. _That really hurt, you couldn’t give a guy some warning?_  
  
 _Sorry._  
  
 _No, it’s okay, you stay put for a sec, all right?_ And there’s a flash of pure apprehension, star-bright under the casual tone, when Tony eases him back against the wall. “I’ll be right back.”  
  
Charles shrugs—not as if he’s going anyplace—and closes his eyes.  
  
The darkness, behind his eyelids, burns with unfulfilled need, with restlessness, with sensory overload. He touches his wrist again. Thinks, Erik, I’m sorry, I’m trying.  
  
“Attention!” Charles opens his eyes. Tony’s standing on a table, out in the kitchen. Charles could be surprised by this, but he’s past the point of surprise at anything Tony does, and equally at anything the universe might turn up with right now.  
  
“I know you’re all having a fantastic time—” Cheers. Whistles. “—yes, thank you, hey, I don’t think these panties are going to fit me but I’ll keep them for later, thanks. Listen, it’s been great, but I need everyone to leave.”  
  
Grumbles, this time. Also some laughter: they don’t think he’s serious.  
  
“I mean it,” Tony says, and Charles appreciates what he’s doing, oh god so much, but he has a horrible feeling it’s already too late, “I want to go invent something, and you’re all distracting, and I love every one of you—especially you, over there, with the blonde hair, call me—but please, right now, I’d really like you to go.”  
  
There’s a pause. Some tentative rustlings toward the door.  
  
“I’ll buy free drinks for everyone if you all go over to the closest bar right now,” Tony suggests. “Tell them to charge it all to me.”  
  
In the wake of the mass exodus, the house becomes, mercifully, a hairsbreadth more still.  
  
Tony must’ve gotten down from the table, because somehow he’s back there kneeling next to Charles again, eyes all dark and anxious. “Better?”  
  
“Yes,” Charles says, because it is, though not enough.  
  
“Not enough…” Tony hesitates. “Come on. Bed. I’ve seen you look like this before, you know. But never this bad. And if I remember right, those’re the nights you, you know, wait, did you want, I didn’t have to send _everyone_ away—”  
  
“No. I can’t. I promised—never mind, Tony. I can’t.”  
  
“Okay. We’re putting you in bed, and then I’m looking at your arm, all right? Creed’s fingernails can’t be very clean. You might get tetanus. Or rabies.”  
  
“That isn’t how one gets rabies,” Charles says weakly, and lets Tony half-carry him down the hall and strip off his shirt and bandage him up. Tony’s actually fairly good at that. Enough accidental injuries and burns to have learned.  
  
“Charles…” Tony sits down on the bed beside him. “Is that better? I don’t think it was that bad, but still. You’re going to have some tiny ugly claw-marks, for a while, but they’ll probably go away. Like Creed. Ugly, and gone away.”  
  
“Better…yes.” They sting a bit, post-disinfectant, but that’s not a bad feeling, right now. He’s still here, and this is his body. Almost like being grounded, tethered to himself, again.  
  
“Charles…” Tony’s not quite looking at him. Putting away the first-aid kit, instead, hands casually precise. “You said, I can’t, earlier. Because you promised. You promised someone you wouldn’t have sex? Isn’t that like…promising not to breathe air, or something?”  
  
“I…it’s hard to explain.” He looks down, at his hands. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Tony sighs. “This is some kinky mutant sex thing, isn’t it? Come on, I thought we were friends, don’t I get to know about your kinky mutant sex thing?” And Charles finds himself startled into a laugh.  
  
“Well…it’s not precisely a _mutant_ sex thing, no…”  
  
“Kinky, though?” Accompanied by an exaggeratedly lascivious eyebrow wiggle. Charles dissolves into laughter again, exhaustedly, loopily, and Tony puts a hand on his unwounded shoulder and squeezes, not hard. “Really better, this time?”  
  
“I think so, yes. For now.” It won’t last, but that’s all right. He leans into Tony’s hand, just because it’s a form of being touched. “You know about…you know I’ve…what _have_ you heard? About me?”  
  
“Um. We’re friends, right?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“So…I’m going to choose not to say.”  
  
“Ah.” He shuts his eyes, for an instant. “Well. Most of it’s likely true. Or. Was true.”  
  
“Was.”  
  
“Is? I mean me wanting that. Those things. Whatever you’ve heard. But not like that, not any longer, not just…indiscriminately.” He shrugs. One-shouldered. With the wounded arm. “With Erik. It’s…I’m not…” And then, giving up, “I’m his.”  
  
Tony looks at him with the oddest expression, for a while. Opens his mouth, closes it, shakes his head. “You know, I might actually be jealous.”  
  
“…you?”  
  
“Not of that. Seriously. Can you imagine me actually listening to anyone? No, neither can I. But…” Tony glances away. One hand fiddles with the corner of the closest sheet. In motion. “When you first got here, you looked—you were missing him, right, I could tell, but you were all…sappily content. In love. Disgustingly head over heels. I mean, totally Hallmark cards and doves and wedding bells.”  
  
“I’m missing why you’re jealous, again.”  
  
“You look happy. When you’re thinking about him.” There’s a short silence, then.  
  
After a while Tony adds, “And apparently you also feel happy when you think about him spanking you over his knee, which I really did not need to know, and by the way I’ve had more inappropriately timed erections in the past week than I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot of inappropriately timed erections.”  
  
“Oh god,” Charles says, unsure whether to apologize or be horrified at the visuals. “I’m so sorry. Very sorry. I can—I could leave, or—”  
  
“Not while you’re feeling like this, you can’t.”  
  
“You’re not—you don’t—”  
  
“Hey, all us geniuses have our own coping mechanisms. At least yours is sexy. Your person—the person you showed me, in your head—”  
  
“Erik.” He can’t look at Tony, then. Even the name conjures sparks, past and present, the firm low-voiced command: _use my name, it’s about us_ , and himself answering, softly, _yes, Erik_ … He feels himself shiver. It hurts.  
  
“Erik, then. He’s your—you—I don’t even know, what words do you use for this, anyway?” Tony tips his head to one side, grins. “No, on second thought, don’t tell me. But that’s not really what I’m asking. What you showed me, what you need—does it have to be him? Or could you…”  
  
“You’re not seriously asking whether I considered sleeping with Victor Creed, are you?” _Please don’t say yes to that._  
  
Tony snorts, inelegantly. _Hell no. You have standards. I have no standards, and he repulses ME_. “No. Listen, Charles…” One corner of that mouth quirks up, the usual half-smile, this time layered over something else, carefully masked behind flippancy. “I’m asking, if you need to…if you need this, you know…I’m not bad at sleeping with people. I’ve been told I’m extremely good at sleeping with people, in fact.”  
  
For a brief ellipsis in time, Charles can’t actually speak. He’s not considering the yes, not exactly, but the idea of it is so agonizingly near, so close, the possibility of reprieve right there, and his head hurts so badly and if the world could just stop, just for one second…  
  
“Oh,” he manages. “Oh, Tony…thank you—”  
  
“Okay,” Tony says, obviously taking that statement as agreement, and then puts a hand on Charles’s hip. “So…I’ve never actually done this before, not exactly my thing, but I’m pretty sure I can handle telling you what to do, I can be very demanding, if that’s what you need,” and Charles, unable to talk, panicking, manages one frantic _I mean thank you but no I can’t, I can’t, please,_ and Tony stops, and looks at him.  
  
The guest bed’s very soft, and the amber-hued lamplight warms up the night from the bedside tables. And neither of them breaks the silence, for a heartbeat or two.  
  
“I’m not sure whether or not to be insulted, just so you know.”  
  
And Charles, somewhat to his own surprise, comes up with a watery laugh. “It’s not you, it’s me?”  
  
“Oh, come on,” Tony says, exaggerated mournfulness in full effect, “quit stealing my lines when I’m trying to comfort you. Seriously, though, no?”  
  
 _I…would. I would but I…can’t_. He’s promised. He’s promised Erik. That promise spins in his mind, glittering thread that binds him in place. He could snap that thread, could let Tony try to make this better; but he’d never be able to refasten the severed ends. Erik might forgive him, probably _would_ forgive him. Would understand. But they’d both always know.  
  
He holds onto the vow, the obedience. Breathes.  
  
When he thinks of it in those terms—obedience, compliance, Erik’s orders if not Erik’s presence—the thread gets a bit stronger, thicker, more sturdily woven. He clutches it like his only hope of survival in a snowstorm.  
  
Tony, possibly picking up some of that—he’s not being careful about not projecting, all his efforts directed to his shields—nods. Looks, unusually for him, extremely focused. “You said Erik, right? Last name?”  
  
 _Erik_ …  
  
“Dammit, Charles—!” _Full name. Tell me. Now._  
  
 _Erik Lehnsherr, sir._ He flinches, after. Instinctive.  
  
“Sorry,” Tony says, “sorry, I’m sorry, I just—I needed you to tell me—you—oh, hell. I can’t believe I’m saying this, Charles, and to you of all people, I mean, you don’t know how hard it is to say this, but don’t ever say that to me again. I won’t even make fun of you later.”  
  
And that, inexplicably, makes him smile, though it takes him a moment to realize that that’s what the movement is. _Yes, you will._  
  
 _Oh thank every fucking god—!!_ “Well…only when no one else is around. I’m not entirely without compassion. Okay, and you said New Orleans, right?”  
  
 _Yes?_  
  
“Okay.” Tony gets up off the bed. Pats Charles’s knee, gingerly, as he does. This seems to be some sort of attempted compromise between the compulsion to offer comfort and all the persistent guilt. “Don’t…just don’t move, okay? Try to rest? If there’s pizza, do you want some?”  
  
The thought of food, particularly cheese-covered and greasy food, makes his stomach flip. _No, sorry._  
  
“Quit apologizing to me. I’m going to go hide in the garage and soothe my bruised ego for a while. If you need anything, anything at all—” _If you change your mind, if I can help you—_ “Ask JARVIS to get me. Any time. Even if you just want a glass of water. I mean that.”  
  
Charles nods, and sends back one more half-articulated thank-you, and then Tony’s gone, lights off and door shut behind him. Giving him space, as much as possible.  
  
When he shuts his eyes, the universe presses in on his shields. They’re so delicate, those barricades between himself and the world. Deliberately, he starts shoring them back up. One layer at a time. Repeatedly.  
  
Time passes, in skips and jumps and trickles and dreams.  
  
He has no idea how long it’s been. Days? Weeks? Can’t’ve been more than weeks. He’d know that. Surely he’d know.  
  
He knows he’s curled up on the floor at the side of Tony’s fluffiest guest bed. He doesn’t think that texture, the plush weave of throw rugs over golden wood, has changed at all.  
  
It might be midafternoon, at the moment. The sunshine, if that is sunshine, glows along his skin. It’s hot.  
  
The bed had been too comfortable. Too much like someplace out of memories. Someplace he might’ve been, or could still be, or needs to be, with Erik’s hands on his body.  
  
He’d gotten out of the bed and onto the floor and shaken his head when Tony’d asked, coming by in the morning, whether he needed assistance getting up. Had heard the muttered obscenity, bitten off under worried breath, when Tony’d stepped out of the room to answer a phone call.  
  
The floor’s quite nice really. Hard enough to be a constant reminder of who and where he is; soft enough, courtesy of the throw rug, that he likely won’t have bumps or bruises.  
  
It’s possible that Tony’s visit hadn’t been this morning, or even yesterday morning. From behind the walls, in his head, it’s difficult to tell.  
  
In his head, he’s sitting very quietly in a room that looks a lot like his favorite Oxford pub, maybe combined with some implausibly endless bookshelves and fewer windows and a distinct lack of any other people or music or for that matter extra chairs. It’s a half-ordinary space, unreal but remembered as if it’d been.  
  
There are extra locks on the door. Among other precautions.  
  
Occasionally the thick old wood shakes as some violent stray thought, lust or fear or pain or grief or love, thumps against it. He tries not to look in that direction. Looking hurts.  
  
Idly, he wonders how long it’ll be before that door breaks down too, and the universe explodes into his last refuge.  
  
When he breathes, the air tastes like sunlight and dust.  
  
He can’t hear much, from here. He heard Tony talking, some indeterminate time ago. He’d almost come out, but he’d spent so much time wrapping this particular space in cotton wool and thick insulation that he wasn’t certain he could, and then he wasn’t certain what might happen if he did. The rest of the world’s out there, not merely Tony, after all.  
  
Tony’d likely object to being called merely anything. Oh, well, Charles decides, and contemplates his books. The problem, of course, is that he’s read them all already; that’s how they come to be at home here in his head. Still, no reason not to revisit old friends.  
  
His head pounds. In time with the thunder at the door.  
  
Erik, he thinks, to himself and the silent bookcases, I’m so sorry. I know it’s not your fault, I know you tried to be here. I’m trying to be here too.  
  
Erik means focus. Means an anchorpoint amid the din. One voice, clearly heard.  
  
He sits down on the floor, cross-legged, a volume of Heinlein at hand. Keeps his back to the door. Determinedly pretends he remembers all the words.  
  
After a while the assault stops coming in waves, and becomes constant. Charles stops attempting to read, and shuts his eyes.  
  
He’s awake enough to hear the more familiar voices when they return. They buzz and swirl, trapped outside his refuge the same way he’s trapped inside, meaningless cacophonous sounds. One of them he recognizes as Tony’s, all charm and flirtation over a deep well of profound joy in creation; one, steadfast and sturdy, he vaguely recalls as being a friend of Tony’s.  
  
The third voice is Erik’s. It’s cool and clear as a spear of light through deep water. Blue-hued steel and certainty and, right now, a taste like weeping iron.  
  
“Charles,” Erik’s saying. “Charles. Please.” _Please look at me, I love you, I’m so sorry, can you hear me, please hear me/please come back/come back and smile at me/what have I done not being here/should’ve been here and never left you/never will again/I love you Charles PLEASE—_  
  
The voice, although beloved, is too loud. One more crashing wave, and he’s already drowning.  
  
Tony says something that he doesn’t quite catch; Erik answers, indistinctly, and then whispers, “Charles, I’m sorry,” and then there’s a bright burst of pain across his cheek, one single slap.  
  
It’s not hard. Not even enough to bruise. It’s the shock more than anything else that snaps him back into reality: this is his body, that’s his face feeling the impact, this is real. And Erik’s here.  
  
He can do this, he can do anything, with Erik here.  
  
He takes a deep breath and stands up and reaches out and opens the door, in his head. And then his eyes.  
  
“Charles,” Erik pleads, kneeling in front of him with stricken eyes. “Charles. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know I hit you, I didn’t want to, I didn’t mean—but you’re looking at me—you _are_ looking at me—please, please say something—”  
  
 _Erik._  
  
 _Yes…?_ It’s a question. Erik holding his breath. Hope and despair.  
  
He blinks. Erik’s still there. The rest of the world recedes, fractionally, into the background behind that angular shape.  
  
 _Erik_ , he says again. His cheek’s tingling. He lifts a hand, touches the sting.  
  
 _Charles, I’m sorry_ , Erik whispers. _I didn’t know what else to—you said once that you needed—intensity, something physical, and I—_  
  
Tony shifts weight, grumbles, “If you don’t want him to touch you again I will happily throw him out and be sorry I let him try…” and Charles looks past Erik, briefly, to see the uncategorizable expression on Tony’s face. After a second he realizes that it’s uncategorizable because he’s never seen Tony Stark afraid, on anyone else’s behalf, before.  
  
To Erik, soundlessly, he whispers back, _I love you, it’s all right, I’m—not all right, but—I know why you did it, and it worked, so thank you_ ; and out loud, to them both, he says it again: “No, don’t apologize, I needed—thank you,” and then leans into Erik’s solid strength, and shuts his eyes because the darkness is safer this time around.  
  
“Don’t do it again,” Tony says. Charles isn’t sure which one of them that’s addressed to. It doesn’t matter, not really, not now.  
  
“No.” Erik strokes a hand through Charles’s hair, thumb smoothing over one eyebrow. “No, not ever. Charles, you can hear me, correct? This will not ever happen again.”  
  
The adamant tone’s quite nice. He lets it sink in, forgetting to reply amid all the tangled glowing presence of support.  
  
“ _Charles_ ,” Erik says, sharply, in their heads and out loud. “Answer me. Tell me you believe me. Tell me you’re here.” _Please. You can’t leave me, please—_  
  
“I’m here. And I believe you. I’m sorry, Erik.” _I do believe you. I know you mean it…wait, how are you here? I’m—I think I’ve missed something._  
  
“I love you. Don’t worry about that. Not yet.” But he catches the glimpse of memory regardless, perceptions too hypersensitive right now to not see.  
  
 _Tony?_  
  
“I did offer to help, if you recall,” Tony says, “and since you refused my self, the least I could offer was my jet. It can fly through hurricanes. Or it could before _someone_ decided it wasn’t moving fast enough and threw it back here.” This last is directed, with a scowl, at Erik. Tony’s thoughts, however, say something quite different about desperation and being in time.  
  
“You offered to _what?”_ Several objects rattle ominously around the room.  
  
“He turned me down. Missed the experience of a lifetime—”  
  
Even half-awake, Charles can see the imminent explosion looming. Tony probably can too, but Tony is too enamored of bad ideas for his own good and won’t do anything to defuse the ticking bomb.  
  
 _Erik_ , he whispers, and then lets his head fall a bit more limply onto that muscular shoulder. It’s not even really an act. He’s awfully tired.  
  
Erik swears creatively and blasphemously in at least four languages. “Stark—”  
  
“I didn’t know it was this bad, I swear, he didn’t tell me—”  
  
“I don’t care what you did or didn’t know. I can deal with you later. This is about him.” _Charles, can you hear me?_  
  
 _Yes, Erik._  
  
“What do you need?” Tony’s verbal question’s followed, confusingly, by Erik’s telepathic _What do you need?_ in his head. Charles flinches. Turns his face into that muscular shoulder.  
  
 _All right. You’re all right. I’m sorry. Not a fair question._  
  
 _I need you, Erik. Please._  
  
 _You can have me. One moment more, I promise, and then everything you need_. “We need a bedroom. Not the room—this room?—that he’s been using.” Erik’s fingers brush hair out of his eyes. Charles tilts his head into the contact. “And…I think…anything metal that you can spare.”  
  
Tony opens his mouth. Closes it. Plants his feet and radiates stubbornness every which way. “Charles?”  
  
Charles looks over. Erik’s hand finds the nape of his neck, and remains there, with conviction. _Yes_.  
  
“If you’re sure…”  
  
 _I’m sure. Please_. Tony’s not entirely convinced about trusting Erik, but he’s convinced that _Charles_ trusts Erik, and that’s enough to tip the scales.  
  
“Two doors down,” Tony concedes. “No one’s used that room in ages. Not since I accidentally reprogrammed the alarm clock to jump around the room at three am. It’s not like it’s _that_ annoying—”  
  
“Metal?”  
  
“There’s…a bunch of unopened tool kits…in a closet somewhere. People keep giving them to me as presents. They never realize I like to build my own. Why do you need—never mind. Charles…” Tony gazes at him, eyebrows creased. “I hope this is what you need it to be. And I am sorry.”  
  
 _Oh, Tony, you don’t have to—_  
  
“My house, my apology. Lehnsherr…” In the face of Erik’s glare, Tony opts for, simply, “take care of him.”  
  
“Of _course_.”  
  
“I’ll be down in the garage. Not hearing anything. Yell if you need me. Or actually yell for JARVIS first because I don’t want to know what you might need me for, okay.”  
  
Erik doesn’t even say thank you—they’ll really have to discuss social niceties later, Charles thinks hazily—before whisking them off. Two doors down. A wave of Erik’s hand banishing the aforementioned alarm clock to the hall. One of the tool kits popping out of the closet—how Erik knows where and which one is beyond comprehension, at the moment—and scampering behind them into the room. Creamy walls and casually elegant wood; very Southern California, this room, open shutters letting in billowing buttercup light and the joyous blue of the sea.  
  
Erik sets him on the bed, and goes over to close the shutters by hand, sealing them away inside. Pauses in the resultant dimness, obviously looking for the lights; Charles offers, distantly amused, “JARVIS, lights at half, please,” and subsequently finds himself a bit startled at the noise of his own voice.  
  
Erik, in between expressions of relief at precisely the same thing, mutters words about houses being too intelligent for their own good even as the lights come on; JARVIS retorts with other words in German, and Erik looks appalled. “Charles, why does the house feel the need to swear at me? With _those_ words?”  
  
“I am not certain I like you,” JARVIS informs him. “Professor Xavier is a friend.”  
  
“JARVIS,” Charles says, now that talking’s been established as an act he can currently manage, “Tony told you I was a friend, yes? So you would occasionally listen to me? Erik is also a friend. Not a random guest. And, Erik, JARVIS learns his vocabulary from Tony, so…”  
  
“I listen to you, Professor Xavier, because I like you, not because of my programming. Are you certain? He appears fairly menacing in demeanor.”  
  
Charles has to concede the point, especially given Erik’s present expression. “Nevertheless.”  
  
“Very well,” JARVIS sighs, sounding put-upon, “I expect you’ll want to be left alone,” and then stops talking, possibly in order to sulk.  
  
Charles flops back on the tidily made bed, and shuts his eyes. Tries to hold all the pieces together for a minute longer. If he has to, he can.  
  
“Charles?” Erik must’ve run back to his side. _Charles, say something—_  
  
 _I’m here. You’re helping._ True. Erik’s presence is so vividly defined, the shape of him in the world, that mind glowing so alluringly bright. Focus. A tether.  
  
His control’s so weak, though, wobbling and fraying at the edges, splintering off in all directions—  
  
 _Charles_ , Erik snaps, abruptly. _Listen to me_.  
  
One command. Clean-cut and straightforward. Imperative.  
  
When he answers _Yes, Erik_ , it’s like the lifting of the world from weary shoulders, leaving him weightless and free.  
  
 _Good. Can you stand?_  
  
 _I don’t know, sir._  
  
 _Try_. Erik takes his hands, tugs him to his feet; inches shorter, he has to look up to meet those kaleidoscopic eyes, mint and storms and slate-blue water. “You have no idea how terrified I was. When I walked into that room, when I saw you…even before that, when Stark’s man turned up with that jet…I knew it had to be serious. I didn’t know how serious.”  
  
 _Erik_ , Charles says, not sure why, and leans into the grip of strong hands, holding him upright.  
  
“I knew what you told me,” Erik murmurs, eyes not leaving his, “about how badly you needed the outlet. I never thought—oh, _god_ , Charles—” That supple voice breaks, tears in the flexible silk. The images pour in unchecked: Charles on the floor, practically catatonic, not responding when Erik enters the room or falls to horrified knees beside him or frantically calls his name…  
  
 _I thought I’d lost you. I thought—I wouldn’t give up, of course I would never—but, Charles, you—I love you, thank you, I love you._  
  
 _I love you_. Charles steps forward and Erik’s arms close about him, and they don’t move for some time. Eventually, though, the restlessness bubbles up again, the lack of stability, the awareness of his precarious position at cliff’s edge. The embrace is welcome assistance, but it’s not quite enough to stop the fall.   
  
 _I’m sorry_. Erik uses a finger to nudge his chin up. _This isn’t what you need, not exactly, is it?_  
  
 _No…sorry, Erik._  
  
 _No, don’t. My fault. I just had to—_  
  
 _I understand. Sir._  
  
 _Sir—Charles, you know you don’t have to—_  
  
 _I know. I want to, for this. If you don’t mind._  
  
 _Not if it’ll help_. Erik kisses him then, on the lips, not deeply, but decidedly. _Ready?_  
  
 _Yes, Erik._  
  
 _Yes, Charles._ “Then…on your knees.” That voice drops into his head like a stone into a pool, all the ripples now concentric about that single point.  
  
Charles kneels, head bowed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Erik helps, and Charles feels better. Or, the chapter in which all the sex occurs. (Also, I apologize for the terrible pun at the end.)

  
“I know you were being…obedient. Doing what I asked of you. No one else, not even your own hands, waiting for permission…” One of Erik’s hands lands on the back of his neck. Large, and heavy. Charles trembles. He knows he wasn’t _that_ obedient; he’d given in, that one time, had tried getting himself off there in the bed where he’d not been able to finish, thinking of Erik’s voice, Erik’s orders…  
  
He can’t let Erik go on believing that he’s a good submissive, that he’s been well behaved; he can’t say it out loud, so lets the image float to the surface of their minds on a wave of shame/apology/regret, and keeps his eyes down, and waits.  
  
Erik’s hand tightens on his neck, but that voice doesn’t say anything right away.  
  
The room, around them, is very peaceful. The silence is expectant, waiting as well; even the furniture manages the waiting with more grace than he has, Charles thinks, and, shocked, finds himself wanting to cry.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, softly. “Look at me.”  
  
It’s hard, but he does.  
  
Erik’s expression is complicated: a mix of surprise and sudden exasperation and comprehension melting into something akin to awe. But there’s no disappointment, and Charles dares to hope that maybe he’s forgiven this time.  
  
“You were good,” Erik tells him, out loud. “You were trying so hard, and you did listen, you did _not_ come, did you, Charles?” In their heads, that voice says _I also told you the very first time that if you ever felt that desperate again you do have my permission, you don’t need to wait, you only need to tell me after and not keep secrets when you’re in pain_ and oh, there is a flicker of anger there, protective outrage that Charles would remember the one order and not the other, would place obedience above his own well-being.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Charles whispers. “Erik.” _I…forgot_. The emotions’re a bit too complex to process just now; he knows Erik’s angry and he thinks he understands why but in the dreamlike fog of surrender and compliance and desire it’s difficult to see straight lines.  
  
Erik, likely picking that up as well, takes a deep breath, and Charles can feel him setting those emotions aside, neatly folded up and placed on a mental shelf for later, when they can be dealt with more coherently. Erik’s priority right now is _CharlesCharlesCharles_ , and whatever he can do to make those blue eyes hazy with desire instead of exhausted hurt.  
  
“You didn’t answer me. I asked you a question, Charles.” The hand coils into his hair. Tugs. Hard. Charles can’t hold back the whimper, and doesn’t try.  
  
 _No, Erik. I mean—no, I didn’t. I couldn’t._  
  
Erik nods. _Then you were still good, for me, were you not?_  
  
 _I…_  
  
 _Say it_. “Out loud.”  
  
“…I was,” he starts, and his voice cracks, and Erik’s hand turns gentle, cupping the back of his head and weaving encouragingly through his hair. “I was…good. For you.” When he blinks, he notices that his eyelashes are wet.  
  
“Shh,” Erik says, and wraps the whole arm around him and draws him close, so that his face ends up pressed against a firm thigh, and when he breathes he breathes in the scent of Erik, heat and spice and power and a hint of sweat and airport bustle because Erik hadn’t bothered to change, had come straight here and found him.  
  
 _I’ll always find you_ , Erik says, and strokes his hair, and Charles whispers back, _I know_.  
  
“You were good,” Erik repeats, eventually, aloud, “and so I believe you deserve…a reward, for that. Would you like me to let you have an orgasm, Charles?”  
  
 _Yes, please._  
  
“Then…here, I think. Like this. Stay on your knees. You said you needed to touch yourself, while I wasn’t with you. I think you should do that now. So that I can watch.” That sentence gets emphasized by a nudge of that leg, pushing him backwards, and the casual physical command goes right to his cock, headspinningly painfully sweet.  
  
He whispers, “Yes, Erik,” and slides one hand over the aching arousal that’s tenting his trousers, unsure whether Erik wants him to get undressed or to stay like this, to caress himself through layers of fabric and stroke until he comes in his pants, uncontrolled and messy and still kneeling on the floor.  
  
That thought’s a stab of brilliant desire into his bones, and he feels more than sees Erik’s resulting smile. _If you want that, well…I think you should go ahead._  
  
He moans, inarticulate, at the consent, and his cock’s already leaking eagerness as he gets a better grip, the wet spot growing on the front of his trousers, and he strokes himself through it, feeling the drag of the fabric against heated skin.  
  
 _Oh, god, Erik—_  
  
 _Come for me, Charles_ , Erik orders, every inch of him asserting command and control and, god, dominance; and there’s nothing and no one else in the world now, only himself and his hand on his cock and Erik and Erik’s voice.  
  
 _Please_ , he whispers, not certain what he’s asking for, and works himself harder, faster, rougher, the sound of his own panting echoing in his ears.  
  
 _Please what?_ Erik murmurs, and steps closer, and tangles the hand in his hair again, forcing him to look up, to look into those beautiful eyes while he strokes his own cock, and that’s it, that’s everything he’s been needing, and the orgasm hits like a cloudburst, exploding through sight and sound and all his senses, deafening and blinding and glorious.  
  
Erik’s hand loosens in his hair, and his legs give way unexpectedly, so he ends up more or less collapsed on the floor at Erik’s feet, dizzy with the aftershocks, and then just stays put, limp and boneless and drained and fulfilled.  
  
Erik actually sits down on the floor with him, and touches his cheek, curious, anxious, loving. _All right?_  
  
 _Mmm,_ Charles says, because he can’t talk. He feels utterly weightless, languid and sated and also oddly anticipatory, as if his body knows there’s more to come, craves it, like a drug. Anything Erik wants to do, with him.  
  
He’d not minded lying there at Erik’s feet. He should probably be more worried about whatever that says about him, but he can’t manage to care. It’d felt good, and he feels good, and that’s all that matters just now.  
  
“We might need to talk about that,” Erik observes, “but not now, I think. You ought to see yourself, right now, looking this way…thoroughly despoiled, Charles, absolutely debauched and luscious and decadent. And _mine_.”  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” Charles says, because Erik’s looking far too pleased with himself, and that pleasure’s humming smugly in both their heads, tinged with the barest hint of something more bittersweet and unrevealed: Erik’s soul-deep relief at the sight of Charles looking back and focusing on him and smiling and here and sane.  
  
Erik brushes hair back from his face, and strokes a thumb along the arch of his eyebrow; when Charles closes his eyes, trustingly, Erik’s hand covers them, softly. Keeping the world dark and velvety quiet. Keeping the clatter at bay.  
  
 _I love you_ , Erik tells him, more of a wordless heartbeat than a sentence. Elemental, like the purest iron ore, drawn up from the bones of the earth, coiled in the heart of a star.  
  
Charles, sprawled drowsily on the floor, in the dark with his star, smiles again. He’s tired and sticky and his own come is drying on his clothes and his skin and he’s happy.  
  
Erik finally lifts the hand away—Charles makes a small deprived sound, so Erik winds his hand back into all the hair instead—and tips his head to one side, considering. _Lying on the floor probably isn’t good for you._  
  
 _Possibly not…_  
  
“Come on, up. The bed is directly behind you.”  
  
 _So it is. Do you want me to…clothing…mine, yours…_  
  
“Hmm. I think…no.”  
  
 _?_  
  
“I enjoy you this way. And so do you; I heard that thought. Can you stand, or would you like me to carry you?”  
  
 _Heavy_ , Charles argues, but when he sits up he has to concede that he is somewhat unsteady, from tiredness, from omnipresent drifting arousal. Erik laughs, scoops him up, and tosses him onto the bed, toeing off his own shoes and socks along the way. “You’re not that heavy. And I believe you’ve lost weight.” _Charles, you were eating, weren’t you?_  
  
“I ate,” Charles protests. “There was food. There was very definitely food.” He’s in fact not entirely certain when he last ate. He’d lost track of time, at the end.  
  
Erik looks him up and down. “Tony Stark and I are going to have a discussion.”  
  
“He’s a friend, you’re not allowed to stab him with anything pointy…what _are_ you looking at?” _I’m all right. Now. I love you, Erik._  
  
“Oh…so I permit you one orgasm, and you decide what I am allowed to do…I’m looking at _you_ , Charles. You, and your cock, and your expensive suit, which is comprehensively ruined.” _You were thinking that you were happy, earlier. I want you to feel like this always._  
  
 _I want that too,_ Charles says cheerfully, awash in pleasure and excitement and euphoria, and enjoys the resulting startled laugh.  
  
“You _are_ all right, aren’t you. Or at least…” Erik hesitates, a stray thought about Tony and discussions and facts shared in confidence drifting across the connection. _There is something I need to ask you, if you’re up to talking._  
  
Charles raises eyebrows, and doesn’t bother to move. _You know I’ll say yes, whatever you’d like. Were you planning to join me? I believe it’s my turn to do something for you…_  
  
 _You—Charles, yes, you know I want you but I do need to know—_ Erik stops, shakes his head. “Sit up, if you can. Look at me.”  
  
Because Erik’s asking—and it is a request, for all that it’s phrased as an order—he does, tucking his legs under him in the center of the bed.  
  
Erik sighs. Then, unexpectedly, sits down next to him, facing him, one leg dangling off the side and the other folded up so that their knees are touching. Erik’s feet are still bare. “Charles?”  
  
Charles looks at him.  
  
Erik reaches out, touches his face, lifts his chin. “I need to ask you about something that happened. Please be honest with me.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Erik swallows. Starts to lean in a little closer, then stops himself. “Stark told me that you were—that someone named Victor Creed tried to—to touch you.” The line of his lips is tight, and resolute. “Did he—did he hurt you? At all?”  
  
Charles opens his mouth. Stops, one hand automatically going to his arm. The answer’s technically yes, but not badly, and not in the way that Erik’s asking.  
  
Those eyes don’t miss the motion. “Your arm? Can I see?”  
  
He nods, uncertain how to protest his own wellbeing in the face of the set to Erik’s jaw. Allows Erik to unbutton his shirt, and ease it over his shoulders, and off.  
  
Intent eyes spot the bandages instantly. No words emerge, but every metal-accented piece of the room, from doorknobs to drawer handles, quivers.  
  
“I’m all right,” Charles says, and reaches for Erik’s closest hand. _I’m all right. It’s only scratches_.  
  
“Scratches?” Erik lifts his other hand, runs tense fingers along the line of white, just at the edge of skin. “Does this hurt?” _I’m going to kill him._  
  
 _No, you’re not. He didn’t hurt me—not that badly—at least nothing for which he deserves to die_. He catches Erik’s restless hand with his other one, so that they end up sitting on the plush surface of the bed with all four hands joined, like an oathtaking, a childhood ceremony, a promise. “And, no. Honestly only scratches, Erik, I promise.”  
  
“If he ever even looks at you again I get to kill him,” Erik growls, which is likely as much of a compromise as they’re going to get, so Charles nods.  
  
Besides, the protectiveness is rather nice. No one’s ever thought him worth protecting, before. No one’s ever looked at him the way that Erik does, in turns baffled and amused and possessive and fiercely, passionately devoted, and sometimes all of those at once.  
  
“I _am_ all right,” Charles says again, secure in that gaze, that devotion. _I am entirely capable of handling impertinent advances. I did handle him._  
  
“I know you are. I know you did.” Erik looks at their joined hands. _But you’re not all right._  
  
 _I am,_ Charles says, and squeezes his hands tightly, now. “Or I will be. With you.”  
  
 _Incredible_ , Erik’s thoughts say, very loudly. “With me…Charles, you are better, at this moment, correct? You can sit here, and talk to me?”  
  
“Obviously,” Charles says, and Erik looks as if he wants to laugh but is restraining himself. “Yes, I can tell. What I meant was…do you want…are you still going to want…I know you needed me to push you, just now. That first time. I want to, I want to be what you need, but—is this what you need? Now? After—” That gaze darts over to the snowy bandage, quick and poignant. Then flicks back up to Charles’s eyes. _I love you. I will love you no matter what you tell me now. Yes or no or not yet or never. I promise you that._  
  
And Charles smiles, sitting there on the fluffy bed with Erik’s hands in his, those long thumbs gently rubbing over the backs of his fingers, skin and bone and the knobs of flexible joints: reassurance, comfort, tangible love. _I know._  
  
 _Good._  
  
 _Good, hmm?_ “You approve? And…it’s a yes. About this being what I need. You.” He lifts one of Erik’s hands, still entwined with his, and kisses it, lightly. Erik makes a tiny sound; when Charles looks up, those eyes are damp, frozen rivers caught in the thaw of spring.  
  
So he kisses Erik’s hand again, and for good measure opens his mouth and tugs the index finger inside, tasting, stroking, nibbling slightly. Erik makes another sound, closer to a groan, and then abruptly flips them over and down onto the bed, one quick blur of muscles and motion, and Charles breathes in at the sensation of being handled so easily, all that strength and power intoxicating and arousing beyond words.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, and trails his wet finger across Charles’s lips. _Tell me what you need from me_.  
  
“I need…” He stops talking out loud, as Erik shifts his weight and their erections rub together, Erik not fully aroused yet, still concerned, but getting there; and his own cock hardens even more, a rush of blood at the sensation of Erik’s length stirring and swelling and pressing against him.  
  
 _I need you to show me. That I’m yours, and only yours, not his, not anyone else’s, not alone with all this…_  
  
 _NEVER alone,_ Erik answers, swiftly. _You should never have to feel that way_. “You told me that neither of us would be alone, when I needed to hear it. And now I am saying it to you.” The love and fierceness is practically palpable, in the air, in the words, in those eyes, when Erik looks down at him and adds, _and you are mine. I love you, and you’re mine, and I’m going to hold on to you._  
  
 _Yes, please._  
  
 _And quite possibly fuck you until you can’t walk._  
  
 _Yes, sir!_  
  
Erik laughs out loud at the eagerness. Charles wants to laugh, too, but has fingertips over his lips, so settles for broadcasting the laughter into Erik’s mind, brilliant and joyous as sunbeams at dawn.  
  
 _I love you._  
  
 _And I love you._  
  
 _Yes, Erik,_ Charles says demurely, and then wiggles his hips just to feel Erik’s possessive growl, and the increase in weight holding him still, throughout his entire body.  
  
“Tease,” Erik says, smiling now, with all those excited teeth. “I think we need to reestablish which one of us is truly in charge here, Charles.” _You are, you know_.  
  
“I’m what? In charge, or a dreadful tease?” _Thank_ _you for that_.  
  
 _The answer is yes. Ask me to stop if you need to. I’ll listen_. “I may also ask you to check in with me. Your ridiculous green, yellow, red…”  
  
“Pineapple is not ridiculous,” Charles says comfortably, as Erik wraps a hand around both his wrists and pins them together above his head. “Delicious. Sweet, and tart, and ripe, and you can lick the juice from your hands and mouth, after…”  
  
“Stop that.” _Do I need to be jealous of your tropical fruit? Or were you simply wanting me to picture you licking…juices…from your lips?_  
  
 _The latter_. “Unless you’d like to try bringing food into the bedroom…”  
  
“Perhaps later. For now…” Erik sits up, keeping his hand around captured wrists, so that Charles has to sit up as well. “I believe it’s about time you were naked. Come here.”  
  
“Oh—you want to—” Erik’s surprisingly good at that. Efficient. The efficiency makes the action less confusing: Erik shouldn’t be the one undressing him.  
  
Around the room, the sunnily bright walls, the serene shapes of the dresser and the closet doors, enfold them in encouragement. Security. Their space, only made for them.  
  
“My turn,” Erik tells him. “Or more accurately, your turn.” _I like undressing you. I like watching you do the same for me._  
  
 _Oh_ , Charles says, _all_ _right_ , _then_ , and smiles, just a little, and gets on with unbuttoning his Dominant’s shirt.  
  
 _You think of me that way?_  
  
 _Sometimes yes. Right now yes._  
  
 _Ah_. Comprehension, and love like a signal fire, steady and true. Charles finishes with the shirt, and then the trousers—briefs, as well, slipping them down past Erik’s ankles and over those feet—and folds everything neatly because Erik likes neatness and then comes back and kneels.  
  
 _So_. Erik’s hand rests on top of his head; Charles looks down, at the thick plush weave of the throw rug over honey-oak floorboards, and feels the sharp stab of arousal as he does.  
  
“So,” Erik observes again, “if you think of me that way…sometimes…should I think of you as _my_ submissive, Charles?” The emphasis is impossible to ignore. Charles gasps out loud.  
  
 _Yes please—_  
  
“Only mine. No one else gets to see you like this. Not ever.” _As long as you want this, too._  
  
 _Always, with you._  
  
“And also you have my permission to seriously incapacitate anyone who thinks that you can be touched. If I’m not there to do so in person _.” Which I will be._  
  
 _Thank you, sir,_ Charles says, a little wryly. After all, he _has_.  
  
 _I know_. “Moving on, then…what would you like me to do, with you?”  
  
That question is a surprise. _That’s not—that isn’t—_  
  
 _—the point? I know._ Erik, evidently, knows exactly how that inquiry throws off his balance. Part of the scene, at the moment. “Answer me.”  
  
“I want you to fuck me,” Charles whispers. “Sir.”  
  
“Very good.” The hand cradles the back of his neck, squeezes once, lifts away. “Bed, then?”  
  
Charles nods, but before Erik can move, leans forward and kisses the line of that right hip, the crease and hollow next to the bone; opens his mouth and breathes and tastes Erik, lips wandering along untanned skin, never touched by sun. Erik inhales abruptly, but doesn’t move, only stands still and lets him explore.  
  
He avoids Erik’s cock for now, even though it’s there and so tempting, heated iron strength that he’s imagining inside him. Might be presumptuous, since Erik’s not asked. And, in any case, not the gesture he wants, at this exact moment, less sexual than sensual, erotic as the act of yielding.  
  
He kisses the inside of Erik’s knee, skin over that flexible joint; lower, lips brushing over Erik’s calf and an old scar from a fist-and-glass-bottle fight in Turkey. Lower still, lingering over Erik’s ankle, memorizing the details, the texture, the shape.  
  
Finally, he kisses the top of that foot, even though his face flushes hotly as he does it.  
  
Erik doesn’t speak, so he sits up, back on folded-up knees, thighs apart, hands behind his back. He keeps his head down. He’s not sure what Erik’s thinking. Uncertain of the expression he might find if he peeks.  
  
Erik shifts the foot in question, tentatively. Lifts it, presses it forward. Rests the ball of said foot against Charles’s cock. Pushes upwards, firmly.  
  
He hears himself gasp as if from a distance, sound drowned in gilt-edged light. The world’s gone fiery and dim and muffled, in his ears.  
  
“Oh, Charles,” Erik murmurs, amused and pleased and in awe. The pressure of it, Erik’s foot on his cock, increases, just enough to be painful. His head is swimming with the pleasure, the ache, the shame, the need.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says again. _Still pineapple?_  
  
It’s the kindness that does it. The bright silver of worried love, sneaking in through all the humiliation and craving and desire. He whispers back, _Yes, Erik_ , and means the words.  
  
“On the bed. Lie down.”  
  
He does.  
  
Erik, without looking, waves a hand at Tony’s tool-kit gift; the latch opens, and shiny objects fly out, orbiting lazily in the air like awkward ballerinas. Erik contemplates possibilities for a moment, and then the gleaming metal, the wrenches and screwdriver cores and hammerhead, shimmer and dissolve and pour themselves together, a swirl of dark and light mixing and blending under the artificial light.  
  
The liquid pool turns into thin unbreakable silvery cord, and Charles, settled on the bed with his head propped up on one arm—Erik hasn’t said he can’t watch, and he’s got the impression that Erik in fact rather likes him doing so—knows exactly what he has in mind. Grins. Hastily wriggles back down onto the sheets and stretches both arms over his head.  
  
The bed, being part of Tony Stark’s household, is modern and minimalist, not even a proper headboard; Erik’s good at improvising, though. The metal flows smoothly under the mattress, and back up, and pins his wrists in place, with conviction.  
  
Erik smiles. So does Charles. And then opens his mouth in surprise. “You—that—”  
  
“All of you,” Erik says mildly, and goes back to tying down his ankles, too.  
  
“Oh,” Charles agrees again, and relaxes into the restraints. There’s something comforting about that feeling, being secured and wrapped up in Erik’s metal, Erik’s ability. Being held down, so that he can move or writhe or twist with sensation and still remain safely tethered by Erik, who won’t let him go until or unless he asks.  
  
 _Precisely. Too tight?_  
  
 _No, this is good_. He watches Erik watching him, anticipation and erotic excitement simmering through the air. It’s palpable. Heady, like a drug. The world is himself and Erik, right now, and nothing else, not the healing claw-marks on his arm or the lingering bruises on his shields, will intrude.  
  
Erik sits down beside him. Simply looks at him, only looks, while Charles lies there all tied down and displayed for him, like some extravagant rare prize Erik’s collected from a far-off shore, exotic and delicate and decorated rather than restrained.  
  
Erik’s entertained by that idea; he can feel the amusement, rich and bright. Another emotion threads through the luscious weave of desire, though, darker and just a touch bitter, a line of salt over sweet caramel. He can feel that one, too.  
  
 _Erik_ , he says, very softly, and beckons, as much as he can with one captive hand. _Come here._  
  
And Erik sighs, shakes his head, and bends down for the kiss, as requested. Charles kisses him firmly, with confidence, banishing the lonely little hurt as best he knows how. They’re both here. Erik’s here and _hasn’t_ failed—Erik’s thought, not Charles’s opinion—another person he loves; Charles is here too, and can hold out—did hold out, though not without some scars—for his return.  
  
They’re here, and they’ll be here. Always.  
  
 _I love you,_ Erik says, half-muffled, into the corner of his mouth.  
  
 _And I love you_ , Charles says right back. _About that demonstration I requested from you…_  
  
This time Erik does laugh out loud, even while scrubbing a hand across his eyes. “So impatient. I believe you need to learn proper manners, Charles.” _I can feel your pulse, you know. Here, and here…_ And the metal around his wrists ripples eloquently, warms, tightens hard. Charles shivers with the sudden upsurge of want: _yes, please_.  
  
Erik skims a hand over his chest, and over, along the length of one bound arm; grins, when the muscles inadvertently flex and react. “You do like being held down, don’t you? You like strength, and authority, someone who can take you on, who can take _you_ , Charles, who can claim you the way you want to be claimed…”  
  
He whimpers out loud. And his cock, already aching beautifully, twitches with need.  
  
“Lovely.” _I_ _do like knowing that I can give you what you want._ In-role, yes, that enticingly-accented voice, that expression, unhurried and calmly dominant. But also sincere. With that lurking hint of shy pleasure, under it all.  
  
Charles whimpers again, because Erik likes him to be vocal.  
  
Erik contemplates this. Then summons over another floating streak of pale metal, jewelry-toned in the fading amethyst-gold light of sundown. Charles isn’t certain what tool this one began life as; doesn’t matter.  
  
Under Erik’s hands it stretches and grows smooth and long and thick, elegant craftsmanship for a single purpose. It’s bigger even than Erik’s own cock, which Charles knows so intimately, which has always filled him so deeply.  
  
Erik watches his eyes. Smiles again. Touches the sculpted shape to Charles’s lips, as he’s lying on the pillows, unable to move for all sorts of reasons only vaguely related to the physical restraints. “Suck.”  
  
He does. The metal’s cold, at first, and tastes of steel; but it warms, and grows more familiar, as he runs his tongue over the length, lavishes it with attention, licking and stroking, everything he’d do to Erik’s cock; Erik groans, hazily, and of course those sensations transfer, Charles realizes, of course Erik’s feeling it all as it happens as if that tongue’s caressing him.  
  
He sucks a bit harder, knowing that, letting himself get messy with it, as Erik pulls the length back to watch the slick shine of it, then pushes in and further, down into his throat, and he’s finding it hard to breathe but he takes it all anyway, because Erik’s asking, because Erik won’t hurt him, because this is everything he’s ever wanted, to belong to Erik inside and out, to offer himself wholly and be loved.  
  
He hears himself cough and gasp and fight for air, unyielding thrusts bruising his throat now, but it’s sweet in the hurting, waves of pain and pleasure and obedience closing over his head and pulling him into the blessed languid-blue depths; Erik must be worried, though, because the hard length withdraws from his mouth, resting over his lips while Charles gulps in air and feels the dampness trickling through his eyelashes, and that intimate low voice murmurs _Word?_ into his scattered thoughts.  
  
Charles manages, panting, _Kiwi_ , and Erik’s hand snaps against his cheek, too light to be a slap or a blow but too clear and decisive to be a caress. _Not a good time to be cheeky. I need to know whether you mean green or yellow or—or red._  
  
 _Sorry, sir._ Erik’s hand’s remained on his cheek, apologetically soothing the momentary sting; he keeps his eyes shut, but turns his face to brush his lips over powerful fingers. _I meant green. Pineapple._  
  
 _If you’re going to pick preposterous words, at least use them. Are you certain?_  
  
 _Ye-es…_  
  
 _Charles…_  
  
 _You’re good. I only—I might not be too coherent, if you ask again. This is…_ There aren’t good words. Intense. Profound. All-encompassing. Glorious.  
  
Erik turns that revelation over, for a moment, then nods, not exactly agreement but acknowledgement. _I didn’t realize…_  
  
 _Anything,_ Charles whispers. _Anything you want to do, please, all yours_ , and the words spark like white lightning under his skin, igniting near-orgasms just from the thought, trusting Erik with himself that completely.  
  
 _Charles_ , Erik sighs, and shifts position beside him, trails a fingertip idly along Charles’s flushed and dripping cock, wet from the fading electricity of that revelation, _I do want you to do something. For me._  
  
 _Yes?_  
  
 _I want you_ , Erik says, picking words like careful steps through a minefield, simple and clear as he can make them, _to remember at least one word. Remember your safeword. You said it would be strawberry. You need to be able to use it. I know that might be…difficult. But you can. I know you can. That’s—that is an order, understand?_  
  
 _Oh…_ He can feel his lips making the shape, too, but no sound emerges.  
  
 _Charles_ , Erik asks, and Charles says, with everything he is, _yes_.  
  
Erik grins again, relief like fluttering champagne-bubbles in shared thoughts. Then uses the looped metal around his ankles to pull his legs further apart, and slides the metal cock down from his lips, along his body, deliberately brushing heated flesh on the way. Charles moans, helplessly; Erik taps fingernails over his thigh, picking out freckles to toy with and pinch.  
  
Erik wants him very badly—they can both feel as much—but is practicing self-control. It’s difficult, but he’s telling himself that it’s for Charles. Whatever Charles needs, and right now Charles needs this from him.  
  
Besides, it’s not as if Erik’s not enjoying himself.  
  
That knowledge spills out through the telepathic link, and makes the world sweeter, almost to the point of unendurability.  
  
Erik presses the tip of the dildo right _there_ —and when did he move it there?—to that tight private space, where the muscles quiver with the need to give way, to yield, to be invaded. The tip’s still slick with moisture from Charles’s mouth, from earlier; somewhere deep down, he’s afraid that won’t be enough, that the intrusion will burn and stretch and tear, not enough prep or lubrication, and he can’t decide whether to speak or not, and which word he might say.  
  
But Erik stops, only teasing his entrance, maddeningly patient. Thinks a question at him; Charles, dazed, collects far-flung thoughts. _Top drawer, most likely…no, other one…_  
  
 _Should I be concerned that you know the whereabouts of bottles of lube in Stark’s guest rooms?_  
  
He knows Erik’s not serious, knows the question’s a joke, but he can’t handle the teasing just now, not about that, not when he’s this vulnerable and open and shaking with memories that resurface, earlier shame emerging anew despite the intellectual knowledge of forgiveness; he turns his face into the pillow, eyes closed, when Erik returns.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Erik touches his face, brushes a long finger under one eye. _Are you crying, love?_  
  
He wasn’t, but he might be now. At that word.  
  
“Is it what I said?” The hand strokes through his hair. “I know you only know because you’ve stayed with him before. I’m glad you know. We’re going to need this.” _Charles, I’m sorry._  
  
And Charles opens his eyes, despite swimming vision, and manages a smile. _I know. We’re all right_.  
  
Erik looks from his face to the bottle to his spread legs. Visibly makes a decision. The shiny metal length lifts away; Charles doesn’t see where it ends up.  
  
 _Erik—_  
  
“Shh.” _It’s all right, I want you, that’s all, I do want you. Me, inside you. We’ll save the rest for later. All right?_  
  
Charles nods, as Erik kisses him, tongue sweet and relentless, plundering his mouth, over and over, licking up all the little moans and cries. Erik’s hand moves between his legs, and there’s the pressure of one finger, two, so soon, and he wants it all but it’s so quick—  
  
Erik presses in a third finger, and Charles gasps and pulls against the bonds, feeling himself opened and stretched and made ready for Erik’s cock, ready for Erik to fuck him, body thrumming with need—  
  
In one smooth movement, the fingers slip out and Erik’s tip nudges at that intimate ring of muscle, hard and hot and insistent; Erik whispers, _I love you_ , and then thrusts forward hard, and Charles all but screams, because it’s deliciously fast and huge and feels as if he’s being impaled everywhere, entire body thoroughly taken and claimed and fucked, and Erik pulls back and then does it again and Charles loses all sense of balance, up and down and gravity, the waves crashing over his head in a delirious crescendo.  
  
This is right, this is _right_ , what he’s been needing, Erik inside him, making them both whole, and Erik whispers _love_ again and bites down hard on his shoulder, enough to leave marks, imprints of the two of them together, and Charles wails and jerks against him. _Please, please_ —  
  
Erik smiles, against his skin. _Not until I say you can. You’ll just—have to wait—while I fuck you, while I come inside you—until I’m done with you, leaving you all filled up with me, wet and sticky with me this time—and you won’t know if I’ll say yes, even then, or just leave you there, begging—_  
  
Erik won’t leave him there. They both know that. But Charles feels himself tremble at the words regardless, the thought of it, being that full and denied his own climax and left there pleading, at Erik’s mercy, Erik’s decision—  
  
 _Beautiful_ , Erik tells him, and speeds up again, impossibly, hips slamming into his, cock driving forward into that electric bundle of nerves, and Charles, not processing anything at all, only clinging to the order, twists his wrists in their captivity, just to feel the control; the metal bites down hard in response.  
  
 _Is this what you want? You want to be mine, so all you can feel is me—_  
  
 _Erik_ , Charles sobs, hips lifting of their own accord, as Erik’s cock pounds into that spot over and over, and Erik bends down and breathes into one ear, “I want that too,” and then the hips lose their rhythm, as if admitting that aloud has pushed Erik over the edge, and Erik’s climax erupts inside him, wet heat pulsing over all the sizzling nerve endings—  
  
 _Mine_ , Erik pants, into his neck, his chest; Charles, dimly comprehending, whimpers and trembles and tries to pull him closer, needing, needing, and Erik kisses him one more time, hard and inarguable as truth, and orders, _like this, come like this_ , and Charles collapses into orgasm with Erik’s lips on his, Erik’s metal around his body, Erik’s cock buried inside him, his own cock untouched as it spurts across his skin.  
  
Erik lets him breathe for a few moments, quivering and gulping in air. Slips his own softening cock out, the drag of it over sensitive flesh making Charles whine low in his throat.  
  
 _Word?_  
  
 _I—you—pineapple, sir. Please…_  
  
 _Please what? Stop? Or would you like more?_ Erik grins. Hooks one leg over Charles’s own, extra reinforcement. _I think you can take more_.  
  
He doesn’t manage to answer before the cool metal length from earlier returns, pushing between his spread legs, blunt tip plunging into that space where he’s so wet and loose and pliant, and he can’t, he _can’t_ , but he knows the word he could say and he doesn’t.  
  
 _So good_ , Erik approves, and slips a hand beneath his head, lifting it up. _Watch_.  
  
Oh god. Oh god, Erik wants him to—  
  
He can’t look away. Can’t not watch the slow inexorable glide of gleaming steel into his body, himself shuddering and yielding and giving way.  
  
The length disappears into him, and Erik tilts it just so, pressing up and stroking, and Charles screams, but the sound comes out as a thin little keening cry. When he shuts his eyes at last, turns his head away into Erik’s arm—it’s too much, he’s too exposed, he can’t watch himself while Erik’s watching him—one hand strokes his hair, and eases him back into the pillows. Touches his face, tenderly, then covers his eyes once more, leaving him in simple darkness.  
  
Then Erik fucks him in earnest.  
  
Charles comes a second time, whole body convulsing with it, tugging against the restraints, just barely holding out long enough for the command; Erik can plainly tell, because he says calmly, _if you need to come so badly, Charles, then I think you should. As many times as you can._  
  
And then simply doesn’t let up. Fingers tease his nipples, pinching, playing; a hand, or maybe phantom metal, strokes his cock, warms and vibrates and draws out each last atom of bliss to excruciating heights. The metal inside him vibrates too, ceaselessly.  
  
A third orgasm happens, dry sparks like summer thunderstorms and as uncontrolled; Charles moans Erik’s name, voice cracking even in their heads, and Erik kneels over him, erection somehow present again and even larger than before, and Charles opens his mouth, and Erik fucks him that way too, and as he swallows it all, the salt-musk taste of Erik on his tongue, he thinks, _yours, only yours_ , and _please_ , and _yes_.  
  
There’s no sense of time. Only the swirling haze of unendurable ecstasy, piercing rapture, skin and sweat and the scent of Erik all around him.  
  
 _Charles_ , Erik says, sliding back down his body, mouth wrapping around his exhausted cock, _one more, for me, you can_ , and the metal seems to swell between his legs, expanding, pulsing, and this last orgasm sweeps through him like soft rainfall, an enveloping mist, his body dissolving into limitless bliss.  
  
The world’s very white, and still, and hushed, in the aftermath.  
  
 _Charles_ , Erik says again, and there’s a careful flurry of motion, metal leaving his body, his wrists, his ankles. He feels the departure as if from very far off, cushioned in clouds.  
  
Erik says his name out loud, and touches him, one hand heavy on his hip. Warm. Nice. He moans faintly. Wriggles a little toward Erik, as he would toward the sun.  
  
“You may think you’ve moved,” Erik observes, “but you in fact haven’t. I’m not certain you can. Charles…” _I’m here, I am here, I love you. Come on, come back, I am holding you…_  
  
 _Erik…_  
  
 _That’s right, yes. You’re so lovely. So good, taking all of this, everything I asked of you…_  
  
 _Erik,_ he says again. Gradually, becomes aware that he’s cradled in powerful arms, tucked up against that lean body. _Feels good. This. You._  
  
“I’m glad.” Erik kisses the top of his head. _Are you all right?_  
  
 _I…think so._ Unexpectedly, he shivers, a full-body tremor; Erik’s embrace gets a little tighter. “Are you certain? You looked…at the end, you were…”  
  
 _I’m all right_. Charles kisses that collarbone, conveniently under his lips, without moving. _I heard you. You’re an excellent anchor._  
  
“…excellent, then.” _For me, as well._  
  
 _I love you_. “Oh…oh, no, hang on…”  
  
“What’s wrong?” _I love you, Charles—!_  
  
“No, nothing, sorry…I moved a leg, and I realized—this poor guest bedroom, the bed…oh, god, I didn’t know you could bend a box spring into that shape, that must be your fault…”  
  
 _Are you laughing? I like you laughing_. Erik eyes the room, not taking the arms away from holding him. The flavor in their heads is one of total satisfaction, and a hint of proprietary pride. “Stark deserves this.”  
  
 _However did you manage to get lubricant on the WALL?_ “Also, we’re keeping that tool set.”  
  
“Me? You were quite involved, as I recall. Begging me for more…” _No argument here about the tool set. Charles?_  
  
 _Yes?_ “And you enjoyed that, and so did I.”  
  
“Yes, we did…you are all right, aren’t you?” _As mutually enjoyable as this was, you know this situation will not happen again._  
  
 _This situation—_  
  
 _Not the sex! I did not mean the sex!_ “The sex is most assuredly happening again. I meant before the sex. You having to handle this, alone…I’m never leaving you alone.”  
  
“Ever? Not certain that’s practical, love.” _But thank you._  
  
 _I like hearing you call me that._ “Well…not more than a day or so. We’ll just—that’s simply the way this will be. From now on.” Erik looks at him, eyes all serious affection. Runs a hand along his arm, up from the wrist where faint bruises are beginning to emerge, marks and lines of possession, the alphabet of their language. Up to the bandages that Charles himself has all but forgotten. “Nothing comes between us, Charles.”  
  
Charles, safe and weary and sweat-damp and contented, resettles himself into Erik’s hold, head on that shoulder. The world’s back to a serene susurration outside shimmering shields, rebuilt with the grace of reprieve and standing strong. _That’s the way this will be, then._  
  
And, just before Erik can open his mouth to reply, slips a hand between their bodies, flicks a finger across the tip of Erik’s cock, finds drying tacky wetness there, grins. Says, happily, “I believe something _has,_ er, come between us,” and then starts laughing, even more so when Erik flips him over into the pillows and pins him down and kisses him and growls promises about terrible lines and appropriate punishments into his stomach.  
  
Erik’s laughing also, so Charles puts a hand on his head just to keep him there, as the laughter tumbles out and fills up the disordered bedroom and the quiet air and the entire perfect world.


End file.
